The article starts out with a colorful anecdote of the author driving in California, and ends with her searching for a hidden monument in Germany. Before we get to the end though, she makes a lot of interesting points about monuments and their relation to human history. Paula reminds us that monuments are not only there to look nice, but to remind us of our own history. Without remembrance or history, a monument is reduced to a simple statue or structure. After relating some older American monuments to even older European sculptures the article shifts gears a bit, getting into contemporary monuments, and how their definition has changed and expanded post 1960s. The Vietnam veteran memorial is mentioned, as is the AIDS quilt before detailing the focus of the article which is a monument against fascism in Harberg, Germany. The monument is very interesting and unique, in that it acts like a contract that people sign as a promise to strike down fascism should it ever arise again. The tower would disappear in the decades after its construction, and I thought this was the most interesting part of the monument. This is how contracts truly work, you sign the contract, put it in your desk, and you forget about it. It's up to you to stay true to the contract, even after you have already forgotten about it.
In the end, I think this was a very well written, descriptive article that raised many good points about monuments and their changes in definition and purpose throughout history.
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